Concord Pacific’s advertisement at YVR shows their vision for False Creek — all towers and a think green strip of park.

Come to City Hall on June 26 and tell Council that we want the full 9 acre Creekside Park Extension delivered now!

Here is what we have written:

June 25, 2013

Dear Mayor and Council,

The False Creek Residents Association (FCRA), and its members in City Gate, Crosstown, South False Creek and Yaletown, are members of a coalition of neighbourhoods and organizations that include Grandview Woodlands (GWAC), Strathcona (SRA), the Ray-Cam Community Cooperative Association, the Lord Strathcona Elementary School PAC, the DTES Neighbourhood Council, the Inner City Safety Society, the Strathcona Business Improvement Association, and the Vancouver Chinatown Revitalization Committee.

Together, we have endorsed the attached statement which outlines our approval “in principle” for the removal of the viaducts, subject to Council’s commitment to a transparent and inclusive community engagement process, the terms and principles of which are incorporated in our attached statement.

Although we share the same process concerns as our coalition neighbours to the east, we should be clear that it is our members who will be most directly impacted. Our members live on and around Quebec Street, Abbott Street, Pacific Boulevard, and Carrall Street. We use Andy Livingstone Park daily. We are dependent on the childcares, shops and services located on the impacted roads. The purpose of this letter is to ensure that Council has a clear idea of our issues as unfortunately the Staff Report includes Strathcona, Grandview Woodlands, DTES, Chinatown, and Downtown, but fails to specify FCRA’s issues.

The report makes repeated mention of Council’s consistent and on-going request for the ‘early’ delivery of the 9.06 acre Creekside Park Extension. We believe that plans for removing the viaducts present a unprecedented opportunity to comply with that focus.

Reconfiguring the parks and the streets, removing the viaducts, creating new public spaces, and effecting the required land swaps, all necessitate renegotiating the 2004 agreement with Concord Pacific that called for delivery of the park upon the development of Lot 6C. We believe the Creekside Park Extension should be delivered prior to any construction activity associated with removing the viaducts and building the new Pacific Avenue. Lot 6C is available as a staging area for viaduct removal. Lot 9 and the southern portion of Lot 6C should immediately be delivered as park space, with the completed seawall as envisioned when, on October 6, 2011, Council approved in principle reconfiguration of the Creekside Park Extension.

The timeline included in the staff report (Page 24, Figure 14) shows no firm time commitment for Creekside Park Extension. Unlike other items in the Chart with a fixed line, the line for park delivery is portrayed as a forward arrow, “to infinity and beyond” as Buzz Lightyear might say.

Therefore, as a complement to our support for the attached statement from our Community Coalition, the FCRA requests that delivery of the Creekside Park Extension, or a significant portion thereof, precede any construction or removal of the viaduct. Further, we request that any plan for removing the viaducts have a firm and final plan for delivery of the full park with dates and penalties part of the legal agreement with affected property owners.

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That the East False Creek area has been the main location for so many of these temporary housing units, there is much discussion that other areas on Vancouver should also be open to this kind of housing.